The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to medical imaging systems, and more particularly, to methods and systems that facilitate registering medical images for analysis.
Various image-processing workflows exist in which medical images may undergo registration and segmentation operations. During a registration operation, medical images from different time periods and/or medical images acquired through different modalities are mapped together. During a segmentation operation, anatomical structures or features are extracted from the medical images. For example, a medical image may be analyzed to identify pixels (or voxels) of the medical images as corresponding to a designated organ (e.g., liver) or a designated tissue (e.g., soft tissue). The medical images may be acquired by different imaging modalities (e.g., ultrasound; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); computed tomography (CT); positron emission tomography (PET); single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT); etc.). As one example, a patient may go through a series of imaging sessions to monitor the patient's response to treatment. The medical images obtained during these imaging sessions may be collected and analyzed together.
However, the registration and segmentation operations can require a significant amount of time and/or computing resources. Furthermore, a large number of clinical applications require specific information to facilitate the registration and segmentation operations. In some cases, the information must be provided by the user. For example, it may be necessary for the user to identify a type of segmented lesion, to draw a seed region in a target organ to initiate a semi-automatic segmentation, or to identify a region in a target organ for additional measurements.